New Book In Progress

Restorative Justice Archaeology: Searching for Life in Landscapes of Trauma

This book brings to light the power of Restorative Justice Archaeology (RJA) to shift the focus of traumatic histories beyond single story narratives of death and violence to use archaeology as a means to uncover legacies of resilience and survivance in the present day. Using the Historic Greenwood District in Tulsa, OK as a case study for how RJA projects can foster an environment of collective healing, readers will explore how the cultural landscape of Greenwood has changed over the course of the last century in the wake of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. This book explores not only my complicated journey to becoming an Black woman archaeologist, but also the other RJA projects that connect to or have inspired our work in Tulsa. The book is tentatively titled “Restorative Justice Archaeology: Searching for Life in Landscapes of Trauma” and serves as the anchor for a more in-depth reading in connection to my National Geographic Live show entitled “Greenwood: A Century of Resilience” and a new undergraduate course in development that is tentatively titled “Fragments that Heal: Archaeology, Historical Trauma, and Multivocal Storytelling in Historic Greenwood”